Electronic – FPGA “physical view” visualiser with Verilog simulation

fpgasimulationverilog

I find the 'Physical View' provided with most FPGA tools somewhat mesmerizing for a complex design. Tens of thousands of switchboxes, LUTs, latches and multiplexers all configured from the HDL. It would be great to combine a logic simulator with the post-P&R layout to animate the physical view with 1/0 signals rippling through the design as stimulus is presented. This would also provide a "visual check" that the trace tools are actually making valid measurements of the timing. A slow motion view could show the clock/data race through the design so you can see the longest path lose the setup race against the clock.

It would make an educational video for teaching timing. So, why isn't this done? Other than the tools are fiendishly complicated already and functional correctness is difficult enough without worrying about animation?

Best Answer

Because it wouldn't add value for their customers. It would only be "eye candy" at best. It is easier to debug at the RTL level than at the gate level. Also simulation is faster at the RTL than the gate/LUT level.

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Electronic – What FPGA chips support verilog-ams or verilog-a

I know of no significant FPGA manufacturer that supports analog-anything, so I don't see why they would support Verilog-AMS or Verilog-A.

For the record (because someone will try to point this out as a "flaw" in my logic): PLL's, ADC's, DAC's, and high speed transceivers are NOT analog circuits in this context. Although modern FPGA's have these blocks in them, the analog parts are not re-configurable and the analog stuff is not exposed to the Verilog/VHDL programmer.

Every couple of years some new FPGA maker pops up claiming to have "Analog FPGA's" or some similar buzzword. Most of the time it's the same FPGA as before, just bought by a new company. I've looked into it in the past and the analog performance wasn't great (signal to noise, dynamic range, frequency response, etc). Usually these "new" FPGA companies never go into production and soon close their doors. I can't remember what the names of any of these companies are, and a quick Google search shows no manufacturers doing anything in the past year.

The closest to an "Analog FPGA" that I know of today is the Cypress Semiconductor PSoC stuff. Although you have to use their graphical user interface to configure the analog blocks and can't use anything like a "language".

Electronic – Flip signal values in verilog simulation

There are no simulator commands that I'm aware of to invert a signal. However, if you are doing the force from within the Verilog source, you should simply be able to do this:

force path.to.signal = ~path.to.signal;

If you are forcing it from the simulator, you can probably do the equivalent of the above statement in TCL. You would need to get the current value, invert it, and then apply a force with the inverted value.

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Related Solutions

Electronic – What FPGA chips support verilog-ams or verilog-a

Electronic – Flip signal values in verilog simulation

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